You can lose weight by overcoming your cravings now. Here are the latest tricks of the trade from researchers and experts: 

1. Drink water first. Usually, our cravings can be satisfied simply if we drink a glass of water. Remember, water has no calories. Drinking it frequently contributes to your wellness. So, indulge and drink up!
2. Maintain a food diary. Before visiting a nutritionist or a doctor, keep a record of everything you eat or drink, and your reactions to them for at least three days. Some foods are well-known for causing reactions. Pay close attention if symptoms such as bloating, headaches, fatigue or mood swings follow when you eat or drink dairy foods, wheat, citrus fruit, tomatoes, eggs, sugar or caffeine.
3. Avoid your triggers intentionally. The first few days are always the hardest, and you probably can’t completely eliminate your old cravings. Nevertheless, the longer you avoid your trigger foods, the less likely you may be to want them. In fact, you’ll probably begin to crave the foods you eat, a real bonus if you’ve switched to fresh fruit.
4. Deal with it and let it go. Since stress is a huge trigger for cravings, learning to deal with it could potentially save you hundreds of calories a day. This will take some practice. You can try deep breathing or visualizing a serene scene on your own, or you can speed things up by buying one of the many CDs that teach progressive muscle relaxation.
5. Distract yourself. If only a chocolate bar will do, it’s a craving, and not hunger. Cravings typically last for ten minutes. Know that and divert your mind: Call someone, listen to music, run an errand, meditate or exercise.
6. Indulge yourself, within limits. Once in a while, it’s fine to go ahead and have that ice cream. However, buy a small cone, not a pint. Try 100-calorie snack packs of pretzel sticks, cookies, or peanuts. The technique is to buy only one pack at a time so you won’t be tempted to reach for more. Since even 100 extra calories can interfere with your weight loss if you give in to “temptation” every day. Promise yourself to work off the excess calories. A brisk 15-minute walk will burn 100 calories or so.

Bottom Line:

When you do give in, forgive yourself. If you are eating a diet based around fruit and vegetables and drinking lots of water, the occasional lapse is no cause for concern.

Every culture has its secrets for helping people stay slim. Here are unusual weight-loss tips from around the world:

1. South Africa – Sip some rooibos tea.
Enjoyed throughout the country, rooibos tea is more robust than green tea. Because it’s naturally sweet, it needs no sugar. Tea-drinking cultures generally have lower rates of obesity.

2. Norway – Take a Sunday family tour.
It’s a deeply rooted Norwegian habit: On Sunday, everyone from toddlers to grandparents heads out to hike (in summer) or cross-country ski (in winter). Start a Nordic tradition in your house. Encourage everyone to go out for a walk or a jog around the neighborhood.

3. India- Be twisted up.
Most Americans respect yoga’s stress-busting and flexibility-enhancing power, but not many realize it facilitates weight loss. In fact, a recent study found that yoga devotees have a lower body mass index (BMI) than other exercisers do.

4. Japan – Perfect the power nap.
In this on-the-go country, many people take time for a daily 20- to 30-minute nap. There’s increasing evidence that chronic sleep deprivation raises the risk of weight gain. Next you feel hungry, try to sleep for awhile.

5. France – Sit long, and talk lots.
The French excel at the leisurely family meal. On average, 92 percent of French families dine together nightly, compared with 28 percent of American families. Lengthy meals actually encourage less eating because conversation slows down the fork and gives you time to realize you’re full.

6. Finland – Take up Nordic walking.
This is one of the Finns’ favorite outdoor activities. It’s not as exotic as it sounds: Aiding balance, hold a pair of inexpensive, lightweight walking poles in your hands. The poles also transform walking into a total-body workout that burns 20 percent more calories. Winter or summer, it’s a simple way to derive more fat-reducing benefit from your regular walk.

7. Netherlands – Swallow more herring.
The Dutch down about 85 million of these slippery fish per year-raw. They’re pickled, and then served unadorned as snacks or in soft buns with onions and gherkins for lunch. Oily fish like herring is slimming because it contains lots of omega-3 fatty acids, which reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol, known to increase the amount of fat deposited around the belly area.

8. Malaysia – Turn up the turmeric.
This spice, a key ingredient in curries, grows wild in Malaysian jungles. One of its chief components is a substance called curcumin, which may turn out to be a potent fat fighter. Try some in your next stir-fry.

Following are some great weight loss tips and eating habits from “slimmer nations” around the world:

1. Russia – Carve out a dacha plot.
Russians grow their own vegetables and fruits in their own dachas (gardens) and preserve and can what they grow. That makes their diet more nutritious.

2. Switzerland – Try a bowl of muesli.
Muesli is a porridge or cereal made from oats, fruit, and nuts, each of which has been linked to better health and weight control. The Swiss eat it for breakfast or as a light evening dish. Muesli’s fiber makes it slow to digest, keeping you feeling full longer.

3. Netherlands – Swap the gas pedal for the bike pedal.
54 percent of Dutch bike owners use them for daily activities, such as shopping and traveling to work. Try using your bike to commute or just for errands close to home. If you’re of average size and pedaling at a moderate pace, you can burn around 550 calories per hour.

4. Germany – Eat your breakfast.
An impressive 75 percent of Germans eat breakfast daily (compared with just 44 percent of Americans). They’re sitting down to fruit and whole-grain cereals and breads.

5. Poland – Eat at home more often than you eat out.
Poles typically spend only 5 percent of their family budget on eating out. To save money and pounds, start tracking how often you eat out and how much you spend each month, and gradually cut back.

6. Indonesia – Try fasting once in a while.
Islam, this country’s leading religion, encourages periodic fasting, no food or drink from dawn to dusk. Although experts don’t recommend fasting for weight control, fasting in moderation can break patterns of mindless eating. If you have this goal, try just cutting your calories in half for a day.

7. Thailand – Spice it up.

Thai food is among the spiciest in the world. Eating food slower is a good weight-loss strategy, and making food spicier is an easy way to do it.

8. United Kingdom – Downsize the Supersizing.
If you walk into a McDonald’s in London, the clerk won’t ask if you’d like to ‘supersize’ that. The Brits prefer smaller portions-perhaps a lingering vestige of the frugality instilled by World War II rationing.

9. Brazil – Serve a side dish of rice and beans.
Brazilians stay slim by enjoying this traditional dish with just about every meal. A diet consisting primarily of rice and beans lowers the risk of becoming overweight by about 14 percent because it’s lower in fat and higher in fiber, which is thought to stabilize blood sugar levels.

Human Chorionic Gonadotropic diet also known as HCG diet is a diet that is worth the try. It works through regulation of the body’s metabolism thus enhancing consumption of stored fats by injecting HCG hormone to the body.

During pregnancy, the placenta secretes hCG hormone. Studies have shown that human chorionic gonadotropic hormone regulates the metabolism of fats making it available for the fetus to utilize. This is very essential especially when the mother is not eating enough or not meeting her day to day caloric requirement.

The diet plan is done by injecting HCG to the human body. It then metabolizes the dieter’s stored fats making it readily available for the body to use as a source of energy. While on the diet, the person must follow a strict low calorie diet. Red meat and food rich in carbohydrate should be avoided. Intake should be more on fruits and vegetables.

This diet method has just been recently approved by FDA. It can be administered to the body through injection or orally. Most of the time, HCG drops is the one that is being recommended in the sense that if the person is allergic to the drug, the allergic reaction will take effect in a gradual manner as compared to the injectibles.
The main disadvantage of this diet method is that it decreases the energy level of the dieter. The energy that is being produced by fat metabolism is less compared to the energy that is being produced by carbohydrate metabolism. The person has the tendency of not meeting his daily caloric need. Those who have tried the diet method complained that they experience light headedness and irritability. They also said that they easily get tired. This is why people using the HCG diet regimen is advised to avoid a stressful environment and strenuous activities.

Before adhering to any diet method, always think twice, thrice or even four times. Visit your doctor first. Most of the time, to obtain best results, multiple diet methods are used. But HCG diet being proven safe by FDA is surely worth a try.

In most tropical countries, coconut is very abundant. People in this area have adhered to this diet and in their population, obesity is rare. Studies have shown that coconut oil in contrary to what is presumed has shown certain health benefits that you would never expect it could do. It increases the body’s metabolism by enhancing the release of thyroid hormones thus increasing a person’s energy level. It also has shown to improve cholesterol level since it produces good fatty acids or those fats that are high in density. It improves digestion and lessens a person’s predisposition to yeast infections. In some cases, it clears up skin infections too.

So people would then start to ask, is it really effective? Is it a miracle or a fad? For you to have a better view here are some scientific explanation that could help back up the diet plan.

Coconut oil is rich in medium-chain fatty acids also known as medium-chain triglycerides. Studies claimed that MCTs are easily metabolized by the body. It promotes good digestion because it can easily be absorbed in the intestines. Monoglycerides of MCTs also has anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and anti-viral features. Another advantage of MCTs is that it increases the body’s basal temperature therefore increasing the release of thyroid hormones thus improving the body’s metabolism. One of the fatty acid contained in coconut oil is Caprylic acid. This fatty acid has been used for some time now in treating candida yeast infection.

Consumption of coconut oil also gives a feeling of stomach satisfaction for a longer period of time. The person taking in coconut oil does not easily get hungry. This will help lessen the person’s craving for food due to hunger.

Coconut oil incorporated in the diet is done by taking in one tablespoon of coconut oil together with a meal. That means you have to drink one tablespoon of coconut oil three times a day.

Now, the answer to the question above is yes, coconut oil diet is effective and no it is not a fad or a miracle but it is a fact.